


A Long Return Homeward

by Hymn



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Chaos Era, Crystal Tokyo, Depressive Thoughts, F/F, Post-Crystal Tokyo, Violence, When Everything Goes Wrong, grim and depressing, lemme know if i missed any tags, off screen character deaths, past character deaths, unhappy situation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-11
Updated: 2006-04-11
Packaged: 2019-03-12 12:25:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13547289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hymn/pseuds/Hymn
Summary: In which life has not finished with Neptune just yet, and Mars is both the cause and the remedy.





	A Long Return Homeward

**Author's Note:**

> An 8 drabble story for sm_monthly

**1\. Religion.**  
Neptune lost the concept of faith long ago, when Uranus died, and her princess turned dull and broken-eyed. She fights now because she doesn’t know how to stop, because she is of the ocean and it is deep, and dark, and cold, just like her anger, and just as her vengeance shall be.

Her mirror has a fine crack in it, and she lost her violin, but she makes do with the smaller magics of her craft, and hunts down the slinking, chittering creatures of her enemy, and kills them, without snarl or laugh or tear.

And she is satisfied.

 

**2\. Crippled.**  
She finds Mars, broken and shattered, somewhere on Saturn. Her hair, a beacon, spills like the trail of blood Neptune has left in her wake. Neptune cannot feel as she picks up her ex-comrade, and takes her to her old starship. 

Enemies come, marching down the docks, and they hide, Neptune’s lower lip trembling - _No, sir, honest!_ – and though she’ll never be the consummate actor Venus was, they are safe, and soon are chugging their way through the Belt. 

Mars is a mess of scars, wounds, and whimpers, collapsed in the back of the cockpit. She does not waken.

 

**3\. "It is far safer to be feared than loved." - Machiavelli.**  
Mars does not wake until two weeks have passed, and Neptune has turned twitchy and irritable beneath her calm mask. It is a heinous disposition for the leader of a rebel cell to have, but she cannot seem to shake it.

Mars will no doubt bring a firestorm with her, and Neptune has forgotten how to deal with people who ask questions and do not obey out of fearful awe. She is not quite certain what Mars will think of her, but she knows that it will not be fear, and that thought alone is almost enough to undo her. 

 

**4\. Violence.**  
Fighting is a duty, and Neptune, for centuries, hasn’t thought of herself as a killer, because she has forgotten what life is. Mars brings it all back. 

Mars is a god of blood and violence, and she wants revenge for her wounds - the permanent limp she suffers, and the vicious scar that twists across her abdomen. She is violent and fierce, and Neptune sometimes thinks that her color is red because, eventually, the bloodstains will not wash out.

Watching her, Neptune feels like she wakens from a long sleep, struggling to break free to the surface - to live.

 

**5\. Stupid People.**  
Mars watches her like a raven or a crow, all stare and stillness and sleek darkness, despite her fiery brilliance. Neptune refuses to shiver, and instead slants her a glance from old days, and smiles faintly. “Problem?” she asks, and her tone indicates that there had better not be.

Mars bares her teeth at her in a parody of laughter and steps close, looks up that inch or two of height at her and hisses, eyes like a battle field, “You’d better stay safe, you stupid, idiotic person.”

Neptune blinks eloquently. “What elevated language.”

Rolling her eyes, Mars storms away.

 

**6\. Virgin.**  
Neptune comes back from her solo mission with a broken wrist and a dislocated shoulder to find Mars waiting for her. The woman doesn’t say anything, and her face is as intense and mysterious as the Shinto priestess she was, in a far away life that seems more like a dream of a dream.

She pulls her hair back, and her hands are gentle and clean as she dresses Neptune’s wounds in splint and sling. She says nothing as she works, and nothing as she leaves, and Neptune thinks it ridiculous to want to shiver and gasp like a teenager.

 

**7\. Cigarette.**  
“I hate space,” Mars says.

Neptune looks up, glances from her mirror, which still shows shadows of images. Mars is bright and pale and beautifully wretched, smoke spilling from her mouth as she pulls the fag away and drops it to the ground. She grinds it beneath her pump and lights another with a touch and spark of her fingertip.

“There’s no fucking room to breathe,” she says, voice tight, skin dark like bags beneath her luminous eyes, and Neptune puts down her mirror, and her hands feel empty without it. She fills them with Mars’ hair, and kisses her.

 

**8\. Sugar.**  
Empires have risen and fallen since last Neptune has tasted something as sweet as this. Mars is hot and beautiful and raw beneath her hands, and she pushes her against the wall, hands caught and lips locked, and as she dips her tongue into that silken mouth, it is more delicious than the highest heaven, and the rasping moan she makes when Neptune drags her teeth along her jaw is more precious than any Utopia.

It is real, and it breaks and mends Neptune in one shining, glass-fragmented second, and despite what she has lost, Neptune finds that hope returns.


End file.
